Despite Dr. Wedel's weird insinuations that I had no advisory rolewith the Russian government, I was an official adviser to thatgovernment, but only for two years and two months, from December 1991to January 1994. I worked closely with Anders ?slund during thisperiod. President Yeltsin officially designated us as advisers duringa meeting with us on December 13, 1991, and we received offices inthe Council of Ministers during 1992 and in the Ministry of Financeduring 1993. During the period until the end of 1992, Ã…slund and Imainly advised acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, and in 1993 we leda unit within the Russian Finance Ministry advising Deputy PrimeMinister Boris Fedorov. (The most bizarre and entertaining fiction isDr. Wedel's additional suggestion that I somehow secretly worked withthe IMF during 1992.)

During this entire period, there were notoriously heated divisionswithin the Russian government, and between the Russian government onone side and the Duma and Central Bank on the other. The reformers,led by Gaidar and Fedorov, did what they could to pursue neededreforms, but very often they were blocked. Unlike my experience inmany other countries, such as Poland, little of what I recommendedwas actually enacted. It wasn't pleasant being blamed for highinflation and other ills that resulted from the very opposite of theadvice that ?slund and I were giving (such as when the Central Bankran a disastrous hyperinflationary monetary policy in 1992 and 1993),but it was still worth the effort of supporting the brave reformersfighting an uphill battle. ?slund and I publicly resigned in January1994, days after Gaidar and Fedorov left the government. We wereconcerned about the takeover of the government by the "industriallobby", with a foreshadowing of the mega-corruption that was tofollow, especially in the disgraceful state giveaways of thelucrative natural resource enterprises, mainly during 1994-96. I wasalso particularly distressed by the lack of appropriate Westernadvice and assistance, a point that I made repeatedly in writings andspeeches at that time and afterward.

Somehow in this maelstrom some people came to assume (or at leastclaimed to assume) that whatever happened was what I had recommended,even though I was publicly and privately critical of the lawlessnessand lack of reform progress. For a few people this has continueddespite the fact that I have not advised the Russian government forsix years or even been to Russia for five years. Wedel writes in justthis nonsensical vein. For many years I have publicly and repeatedlydenounced the scandals of privatization such as the "shares forloans" deals, and published articles and books describing andcriticizing the lawlessness and corruption in Russia (including TheRule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia, 1997).

Dr. Wedel deliberately and systematically mixes personal referencesto me, the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) andother Western advisers, so that she can rope me into her phonyconspiracy theories. The HIID projects she refers to were directed byProfessor Andrei Shleifer at Harvard, and I had no role in thoseprojects. She seemingly can't understand that I had a completelyseparate project, and that I resigned from advising the Russiangovernment as of January 1994. One and one half years later, I becamedirector of HIID in July 1995, and Professor Shleifer's project wasone of sixty or so ongoing HIID projects around the world. During theperiod in which I directed HIID (1995-99), I stayed completely awayfrom any personal involvement in any Russian advisory work,consistent with my public resignation in 1994. Moreover, when dubiouspractices in Professor Shleifer's project came to the attention ofthe U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and myself inthe spring of 1997, USAID and I worked together to close the projectimmediately.

Dr. Wedel writes darkly that "it is unclear who paid Sachs and histeam." As I have explained repeatedly to her, and to anyone else thathad the slightest interest, I received my academic salary for my workin Russia, with my leave time from Harvard University covered mainlyby the United Nations University in Helsinki in early 1992, andthereafter by the advisory project supported by the Ford Foundationand the Swedish government during 1992-93. USAID supported a smallamount of my summer academic salary, probably a total of a month ortwo. Of course, I never invested a penny in Russia, or in any othercountry in which I have served as an economic adviser. Nor did Iengage in any consulting services for private businesses or investorsinvolved with the Russian economy.

Dr. Wedel also accuses me of somehow improperly promoting myself tothe Russians as a person "facilitating access to Western money." Asany mildly interested observer of the Russian reforms would know frommy writings and speeches, I strongly believed and publicly argued in1992 that the West should provide large-scale assistance to Russia tosupport the early days of market reforms and stabilization, somethingthe West manifestly declined to do. There was nothing sinister,surreptitious or secretive about any of this: I simply believed (andcontinue to believe) that timely Western help in 1992 and 1993 couldhave played an important role in helping real reforms anddemocratization to take hold, but of course it did not come. TheRussian reformers and I knew that the chances for the neededlarge-scale support were not high, but we felt the effort was worthmaking anyway.

Wedel's twisting of facts and outright misrepresentations go on andon. What I find hard to understand is how The National Interest couldpublish this nonsense without even doing an iota of fact-checking.

A decade after the collapse of the communist system, history hasdemonstrated that those post-communist countries that aggressivelypursued market economic and democratic reforms are rapidly improvingthe lives of their citizens. In her article in The National Interest,Janine Wedel ignores this reality and seems more intent ondenigrating those who have advocated and actively promoted suchradical reform. She appears to lack an analytical framework, and herassertion of facts is inaccurate.

The stars among the post-communist countries are Poland and Estonia,which are generally acknowledged as the most radical marketreformers. According to the European Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment, they also have the least corruption. Russia attempted aradical reform, but unfortunately it stumbled. Even so, Russiancitizens are better off than Ukrainians, who saw a much later reformand less privatization, not to mention the poor Belarusians, whosuffer under a frightful dictatorship in a Soviet theme park. Marketreform and democracy go together in the post-communist world.Russia's problem is not too radical reform, but too little reform.

For the past decade, Janine Wedel has been going after leadingadvocates of radical market economic reform and privatization informer communist countries. Since the shortcomings of her gossipjournalism are so obvious, nobody seems to have bothered to answerher as yet, but when a respectable magazine, such as The NationalInterest, publishes an article of hers, this mixture of lies,half-lies, sly allusions and sheer misunderstandings needs to beexposed.

In 1990 she started pursuing Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton forhaving destroyed the Polish economy through their "ideology . . . ofradical privatization and marketization", which soon turned Polandinto a stunning success. Poland's President Alexander Kwasniewskirecently bestowed a high Polish order on Sachs and on Lipton ingratitude for their services to Poland.

What is her alternative? In her book, Collision and Collusion: TheStrange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe 1989-1998 (1998), sherevealed her ideological preferences by repeatedly citing theold-style Soviet communist Leonid Abalkin with sympathy in hiscriticism of liberal reformers. She seems to advocate U.S. assistanceto such communists: "In short, donors, by equating Western-orientedRussians with reform agendas and traditionalist or communist Russianswith anti-reform agendas, created stereotypes."

Wedel is patently contradictory. She criticizes Western consultantsfor their "[l]ack of the understanding of the Russian culturalcontext", but the particular persons she assails know Russia well.She attacks the major Western economic advisers in Russia for beingboth ineffective and too influential. You cannot have it both ways.